Letters

Wrong title

‘Confusing revolutionary democracy’ should have been the title above my article and Open Polemic’s in last week’s Weekly Worker (October 20). This was the original title of OP’s article, the full version of which was published in their journal No12. The essence of my reply was that the confusion on this issue lay with them.

Instead, above my article were the words, “For rapprochement” (true enough), and above the edited highlights from Open Polemic were the words, “Against rapprochement” (not true). OP are in favour of rapprochement, although they obviously don’t necessarily agree with the terms and conditions on offer from the CPGB. They have, for example, agreed to participate in the rapprochement aggregates with the Revolutionary Democratic Group and CPGB, hopefully in January, March and May. I am reasonably optimistic that the RWT will also participate.

My article last week was the beginning of a debate with OP over the relative merits of defining our tendency as ‘revolutionary democratic communist’ or simply ‘communist’ (rather than for example a ‘Marxist-Leninist tendency’). Despite the polemic, I don’t think OP have taken a hard and fast position against the concept of ‘revolutionary democratic communist’. We were merely testing out the arguments. Open Polemic have done the process of rapprochement a service by engaging critically with the joint RDG-CPGB (PCC) thesis. They are at least taking it seriously.

The letter from the Republican Worker Tendency in last week’s paper also has a bearing on rapprochement. In essence the RWT comrades are complaining that the CPGB (PCC) are not treating them with sufficient respect. Is the PCC being a little arrogant in their treatment of the RWT, or are the RWT behaving like prima donnas? Apart from posing the question I make no comment on this at present, except to say that both arrogance and prima donnerism, like sectarianism, are a barrier and hindrance to rapprochement and must be strongly opposed by every revolutionary democratic communist, whether they are in the RDG, CPGB, RWT or OP.

Dave Craig
London

Funny thing

I see the Republican Worker Tendency is the latest to join the great ‘national socialist’ controversy, referring to the term as “unscientific” and a “smear” (Letters Weekly Worker October 30). I believe the first time it was used in Jack Conrad’s pamphlet, Blair’s rigged referendum and Scotland’s right to self-determination, was on page 32, in a quote taken directly from Fight for the right to party, written by ... Alan Armstrong of the RWT.

Ted Jaszynski
North London

London imperialism

As a socialist and a member of the Scottish National Party I have been following the discussion in the Weekly Worker regarding the referendum result and the issue of the number of spoilt ballot papers with some amusement.

Firstly, I was at the count of the votes in Edinburgh that night and the overwhelming majority of spoilt papers was due to voters writing ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in reply to the questions of the ballot paper instead of putting a cross. Nothing else, I’m afraid.

Secondly, why are you so eager to preserve the archaic ‘Great Britain’? Surely a socialist Scotland - which is more likely at this stage, as a beacon of attraction to all other workers, including Welsh, Irish and English workers - should be fought for.

Some of the ramblings in your paper show a real ignorance and arrogance of the actual situation in Scotland. We do not need any more middle class London imperialism, thank you very much.

William Burns
Edinburgh

Indecent rush

Only those comrades who are entirely ignorant in Scotland will seek to defend SML’s blatantly nationalist stance. Those of us who are English, and have to live in Scotland, are in a better position to know what is really going on.

Nationalism in Scotland is nothing new, but nationalist extremism and violence has been a significant force, although it is low-level and rarely reported outside Scotland itself. For example, a recent current affairs programme (BBC’s Frontline) revealed the widespread extent of the hatred and harassment directed at the English who settle in Scotland. Threats and intimidation are the norm for English people here, who are perceived as the enemy and can risk - and receive - physical beatings and intimidation. This is the reality of everyday life for English people in Scotland.

The thugs who carry out these attacks are acting under the influence of nationalist extremists, who direct events from behind the scenes (The main extremist group, the ‘Scottish National Liberation Army’, is operated by a leadership in Dublin).

But it is these extremists who are dictating the course of events in Scotland, and the indecent rush by Labour (and SML) for a Scottish parliament was motivated purely by the need to create a sop to appease the growing violence of the extremists. It had nothing to do with democracy or with the supposed - and mythical - ‘democratic deficit’.

These are the facts and comrades should not be fooled by apologists for nationalism like SML. Scottish nationalism is like all nationalism, and the descent into reaction is not a mere possibility. It is already the reality.

I urge all comrades to oppose nationalism and separatism in all its forms, including SML’s national socialism.

John Bingham
Glasgow

Will to power

In relation to recent articles in the Weekly Worker about Workers Power’s changing views about the former Soviet bloc, a number of points can be added. Firstly, what has happened contains aspects of a will-to-power trajectory, in which Keith Harvey has used theory for the instrumental purposes of becoming the unchallenged leader of the League for a Revolutionary Communist International and Workers Power. Secondly, it is necessary for all of us - and not just WP - to re-evaluate the base-superstructure metaphor, and to continually ask ourselves whether it retains an explanatory character. In this context, the base and superstructure approach often excludes the role of ideology - and so, as with WP, there can be great difficulty explaining the ‘peaceful process of capitalist restoration’.

Althusser and Balibar’s view of the structural importance of ideological state apparatus can help to understand events better than WP, and the LRCI’s eclectic combination of the political and economic when considering the state as superstructure. Contrary to WP’s approach, ideology was the dynamic element to explain counterrevolution, from Gorbachev’s acceptance of ‘there is no alternative to capitalism’ to the general view within the bureaucracy that they had no historic future as a post-capitalist ruling elite. Historic truimphalism became replaced with pessimism. Kautsky’s centrist view, that the capitalist class may give up when faced with the growing power of the proletariat, was actually realised in these very different circumstances. Possibly Yeltsin is the politician most committed to capitalism in global terms, and this is linked to the demise of the Stalinist world view.

Thirdly, it is probably sadly predictable that the debate within the LRCI was conducted without reference to the view of István Mészáros and Hillel Ticktin. They both identify Stalinist post-capitalist societies as having new exploitative relations, in which a surplus product is inefficiently extracted from the proletariat as alienated labour, but which is not commodity labour power. In this structural and economic context, Ticktin would describe the Soviet Union as a system of crisis.

We do not need to necessarily and historically agree with Ticktin’s perspectives in order to recognise that the economic problems eloquently identified by Gorbachev also represented the ultimate and primary context for the dramatic change in ideological views. Thus the downfall of Gorbachev was quantity turning into quality: a bourgeois state dedicated to restoring capitalism resulted.

Phil Sharpe
Nottingham

‘Anti-terrorism’

Anti-terror laws are on the agenda in every European country. Today a new anti-terror law is about to be voted on in Belgium. This is not a new situation. All over the world there are special laws against revolutionary or liberation movements. Most of them are called ‘anti-terror laws’.

All of them criminalise liberation movements; all of them condemn and sentence them in a special way. To eliminate those movements and organisations, they do things which show that ‘bourgeois democracy’ is a fairy tale.

German imperialism was one of the first among Europe to take steps in that direction. With Paragraph 129, revolutionary organisations faced a lot of special anti-democratic legislation. In the 1950s the Communist Party of Germany was forbidden by the state and condemned to a long period of illegality.

But in 1976 this paragraph was found to be insufficient and an appendix (129a) was created. Opinions and actions against the state, and especially organised actions, were viewed as a crime. In this period the state put political prisoners in isolation cells and held them under conditions of ‘white torture’. Also, it became legal to prevent relatives and lawyers of the political prisoners from visiting them.

What is Paragraph 129a about? According to that law, it is a ‘terrorist’ crime to support the views of a ‘terror’ organisation. It is a serious crime to be a member of such an organisation. And a member of a ‘terror’ organisation can be sentenced for the crimes of another member in the same cruel way.

The practice of this anti-terror law in Germany points to the nature of the bourgeois state. The anti-terror law, which on paper was neutral, has only be used against leftwing and revolutionary people and organisations. Up to now not a single fascist has been sentenced under this law.

The state tries to eliminate the possibility of foreigners being politically active. Refugees who came to Germany for political reasons are not allowed to act on behalf of the situation in their mother country or to support groups that do so.

The most concrete example in the recent past is the attempt to silence the Peruvian MRTA representative in Europe. Isaac Velasco was forbidden by a court to speak in public or act politically in any way.

Together with the Maastricht Treaty and open borders, the Schengen agreement legitimised the collaboration of police and state security forces - especially against foreigners, revolutionary organisations and liberation movements. But there was one problem to be solved: not all the countries that signed the Maastricht Treaty also signed the Schengen agreement. After the Amsterdam Treaty was signed last summer this was no longer necessary. For example, Greece, which resisted signing, agrees to all the points of the Schengen agreement by signing the Amsterdam Treaty. Belgium, which signed the Maastricht Treaty as well as Schengen, is about to prepare an anti-terror law.

In short, developments in Europe show how reactionary and aggressive the imperialists have become.

Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Front
Amsterdam